


Everything Changes

by jacquelee



Series: Star Wars AU, Sabé changes history [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Community: comment_fic, Community: ladiesbingo, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-28 06:59:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8435956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jacquelee/pseuds/jacquelee
Summary: Sabé dies at an old age and wakes up the day she is assigned as Amidala's decoy.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [ladiesbingo](http://ladiesbingo.dreamwidth.org) for the prompt "Everything Changes".
> 
> First installment in the "Star Wars AU, Sabé changes history" series written for [comment_fic](http://comment-fic.livejournal.com) for the prompt "Star Wars, Sabe, she survives all the way ‘til after Return of the Jedi and finally dies at peace – only to wake up on the morning she’s assigned as Amidala’s decoy. Does she attempt to change the future?" (I changed the "at peace" part, actually without realizing it, I didn't look closely enough at the prompt, oops, but it is a death of old age, so I guess it counts).

It was not a moment of knowing, of being prepared, of peace. Sabé had always wondered how full of it the people were who said that dying at an old age was a peaceful, good thing, like meeting an old friend. And now she knew. They were all liars. It was not in any way peaceful. Even at her age, over a hundred and fifteen, she did not want to go. She did not want to die. 

But she didn't have a choice.

And seeing Rabé, who had been living with her for these past, well, nearly hundred years now, crying at her bedside, knowing she would leave her alone even when it probably wasn't for long given that they were the same age, didn't make it any easier. 

Her last thought was that she didn't want to die. She raged against the darkness that came, surely, inevitably. 

And then there was nothing. 

***

"Sabé, wake up! Come on, let's go, you know that today is important, we can't be late!"

Hearing that voice and trying to fight off the sleepiness that still kept a hold on her, Sabé slowly woke up. What was happening? Was this the afterlife? Or something else? 

Opening her eyes, she saw someone stand above her, someone who looked eerily familiar. Someone who now smiled and turned to the door. 

"Come on! It's not like they're going to start without you, but yesterday you said you'd want to be able to get some breakfast in peace before they start the whole thing."

Breakfast? Start? What? 

That was Rabé wasn't it? A much younger Rabé, a person she remembered from photographs and holovids far more than from her own memory, which had been getting more and more cloudy. Rabé who now smiled at her and went out the door. 

Sabé closed her eyes for a moment and shook her head. What was going on here? Something was clearly happening and she had no idea what. She had died, hadn't she? Why was she now here, wherever here was? 

A bed, clearly, in a small room that just like the young Rabé looked eerily familiar. Her room in the palace. Back then, when…

At this thought she suddenly got up and looked around much more attentively. Back when the Trade Federation attacked, back when Naboo was a very unsafe planet to be on. What day was this exactly? Where they already under attack? Or was the attack already over? 

No, that was unlikely. While her memory of a lot of things was hazy, she knew Rabé's smiles, even the ones when she had been very young. And the smile she had shown right now was one that she had never seen in this palace again after the attack. So it had to be before. 

And since Rabé had not seemed worried in the slightest, probably quite some time before. How long had they been in the palace before the attack? Sabé didn't quite remember. A few months definitely. So there was still time. 

Getting up and going to the bathroom, which wasn't hard to find even without her remembering its exact location, she realized what that thought meant. Time for what? Time to change history? Time to make things better? Time to save people whose deaths she still remembered, forever etched into her mind? 

At that point she stopped herself, taking a deep breath and entering the bathroom.

Not knowing what exactly to expect, she looked into the mirror. It was like looking at an old photo, like having somehow fallen into ancient history. Was that what was happening? Did she truly travel back in time? Her face, that lacked the wrinkles and lines she had become so used to over the last few decades would seem to indicate that it was indeed true. 

She touched her again youthful face, her black hair, no longer grey and stringy. No matter what this was, it felt real. 

So what now? What was she going to do? Remembering Rabé's urgency, she decided to wash herself quickly and, going on the assumption that this was indeed real and permanent, to then find out which day this was exactly. From there, she would see what there even was to do. 

One thing was clear, if she was to stay here in this time, if she truly traveled back to her past, she would do everything she could to change things. All the things that had gone wrong, all the people who had died, they deserved a chance. And she would need others to help her. Rabé. Padmé. 

She did not know how to tell them what had happened and if they even would believe her but she knew she needed them. 

Taking a deep breath she turned to the door. Yes, she needed to talk to Rabé and Padmé. However long she was to be in this new reality, she needed someone to share it with. Not just someone but the two people she had loved most in her life. The only people who she knew would believe her. And then they could see together what to do. 

So she walked out of the room into a palace she had not been in for decades that seemed to now be once more her home, looking for the two people in the entire world she wanted to share her new reality with. The two people she knew would help her. 

One thing she knew for certain, even though everything had changed and everything was strange and confusing and she had no idea what exactly to do next, it was still good to be alive. If the alternative was death, she surely was glad that this was what she got instead.


End file.
